Apple to Release an iPad 4 in October? iThinknot

It would be a piece of Apple iHistory for the company to launch two iterations for one iOS product line within the same year.

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Not content to just let the iPad 3 rumors ride off into the sunset, Digitimes is pushing out one of the first iPad 4 rumors of the year. And it's a doozy: According to anonymous sources, Apple is allegedly going to launch the iPad 4 in October of 2012, fresh on the heels of an alleged (and more likely) March release of the company's iPad 3.

Wait, what?

Let's backtrack for a second and take a look at Apple's product timelines. When's the last time the company released two full device iterations within the same product family, within the same year?

The iPhone launched in late June of 2007, followed up by its 3G-sporting successor in July of 2008. The 3GS  still a brand-new phone, even with Apple's refusal to drop the "3" branding  hit stores one year later in July of 2009, with Apple finally jumping up to the fabled iPhone 4 in June of 2010.

Yes, the CDMA-supporting version of the iPhone 4 came to Verizon in February of 2011  the same year as Apple's release of the iPhone 4S (in late October)  but that doesn't count as a significant product iteration per se. The CDMA iPhone 4 is still the same ol' iPhone 4 in general, just one that's set up to work with a different cellular network technology.

In other words, one new iPhone per year.

Next up: The iPad. Apple launched its first iPad in April of 2010; Apple launched its second iPad in March of 2011. That was easy. So here's the iPod touch, too: The device debuted on store shelves in September of 2007, with new generations of the non-phone media player hitting the market in 2008, 2009, and 2010.

Admittedly, the once-per-year schedule gets a little grayer within Apple's iPod lines  Classic, Shuffle, and Nano  but these devices don't run iOS, so there's no need to include them in the conversation right now. From the iPhone, to the iPad, to the iPhone Touch, Apple's lines of iOS devices have received one major iteration per year since the birth of each.

In other words, why would Apple suddenly feel the need to change the game -- and cannibalize the product it would have just launched some seven months prior  by releasing an iPad 4 immediately after an iPad 3? Apple's more likely to drop the price of the iPad 2 to generate appeal for a more inexpensive 'Pad while simultaneously floating the iPad 3 as the flashier alternative.

According to Digitimes, however, "The 9.7-inch iPad 4 is expected to come with much upgraded hardware specifications and integrated applications so as to compete with an array of Android-, Wintel- or WoA (Windows on ARM)-based tablet PCs to be released in the fourth quarter."

David Murphy got his first real taste of technology journalism when he arrived at PC Magazine as an intern in 2005. A three-month stint turned to six months, six months turned to occasional freelance assignments, and he has since rejoined his tech-loving, mostly New York-based friends as one of PCMag.com's news contributors.
His rise to (self-described) fame in the world of tech journalism began during his stint an associate editor at Maximum PC, where his love of cardboard-based PC construction and meetings put him in charge...
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